For one of my classes this summer, I had write annotations/summaries for several books. I enjoyed many of them and I thought that the annotations might be useful for other people, so I will be posting them here. They’re somewhat rough, but considering how much everyone loves when someone at FtB posts about feminism, I doubt it matters.

Question(s) Investigated: What is the environment in video games like for women? Does gamer culture encourage cross-gender competition?

Time Period: 2000s

Geographic Region: US

Subjects studied: Video games, competition, gender relations

Abstract:

Women play as many video games as men, but different ones, generally ones that involve less developed skill. Because gamer culture and the culture at large are so gendered, even in gender-neutral gameplay, the gender of the players impacts the way that the game is played – especially when there is a lot of interacting with other players (444). Civility is taught as something men should always show women, and violence towards women is abhorred (445), yet violence against female characters may be necessary when playing against women.

Men are also extremely hostile when they are beaten by a woman (446). Women and girliness are associated with gayness and weakness and are to be avoided at all costs – to play a woman means that victory will be hollow and loss will be humiliating (447). Women know this as well and it makes them uncomfortable when playing against men (448).Friendly open aggression between men is ok, but there’s no equivalent for women and no equivalent for inter-gender interaction. Women do not use games to establish a dominance hierarchy the same way that men do; women use beauty not skill for their hierarchies (449).

The article ends with suggests as to how to make the gamer community and gaming in general more friendly to women and to crossgender gaming. Normalize crossgender play, create a broader range of female character types, etc.

If there were more women involved in making games, then we would see a lot of different kinds of games. We will also have more women running corporations that run technology. We’ll have a female Bill Gates and a female Steve Jobs.